Treehouse

Pros

Large variety of coding classes.
Easy to understand curriculums.
Free 14-day trial.
Can pause and renew enrollment at any time.
Supports major mobile platforms.

Cons

Monthly fees can add up.
Free trial requires credit card.

Bottom Line

Treehouse is fun to use and easy to follow for budding coders.
Just keep an eye on costs, since you're paying month-to-month.

24 May 2017

Learning to code can be intimidating, and finding the right instructor is key to having a positive experience. Treehouse offers a variety of coding classes for beginners and advanced coders, and its built-in tools make it easy to follow along. The website couldn't be simpler to use: You can easily find courses, see your progress, and access the student forum right from your dashboard. The forum is a great resource for when you're struggling with a coding exercise and need a helping hand, especially if you've been staring at the same code snippet for a very long time. For these reasons, Treehouse is our Editors' Choice for paid online coding classes.

Interface and Pricing

Treehouse offers a basic plan for $25 per month that includes access to learning videos and student forums, as well as code challenges to test your skills. It also offers a Techdegree Plan for $199 per month for those who want to get certification. The Techdegree Plan includes a custom curriculum, real-world projects, an exclusive Slack channel, peer reviews, and a proctored final exam. Each offers a free seven-day trial.

There's also a $49-per-month Pro plan (no trial), which includes video talks from industry leaders and other instructor-created material. If you have a Pro account, and you know you won't be able to log in and work through the class assignments for an extended period of time—because of work requirements or taking a vacation, for example—then you can temporarily pause your subscription. Pausing the subscription means you can take a break from classes and you won't be charged fees until you return. Considering Treehouse bills users monthly, it's nice to have the option to take a break.

Students with valid ID and other supporting documentation are eligible for a discount, and group pricing for businesses and schools is available on request. You can also save money by inviting friends to Treehouse; once five people sign up for full memberships on the service, your account is free for as long as they remain enrolled.

Once you sign up, Treehouse asks about your experience level and what you'd like to build, and then suggests a learning track for you. Throughout the free trial, you get occasional emails with suggestions on what tasks to work on next and reminders of when your trial ends. The interface is very simple. Your Dashboard shows your progress in each course. The left menu offers easy access to the class listing, forums, account settings and help, from any page. Your account also includes Workspaces, where you can play around with code outside of your coursework. Students can have up to 100 Workspaces at a time, and each has a storage limit of 50MB.

Class Selection, Features, and Help

When you're ready to start learning, you can choose between individual classes or tracks made up of several classes. Track options include Learn C#, Web Design, Rails Development, and PHP Development. Classes, which are listed in the Library tab, include How to Make a Website, as well as a variety dedicated to Ruby, WordPress, and other topics.

Treehouse caters to both beginners and experienced coders, but the selection seems a little arbitrary. There are Java classes in the catalog, but none for C++, for example. There are also non-coding classes, such as one on starting your own business. New courses are added weekly; you can see the latest updates on the Treehouse blog.

To start, I selected the Web Design track, which includes 51 hours of coursework. The intro video (which was short and sweet at just over 4 minutes) talks about the basics of HTML and CSS. Using it as a guide, you can create a simple website by the end of the class. Beginners will appreciate the pace, but you can skip ahead if you already have some experience with coding.

During the video, pop-ups show helpful keyboard shortcuts, as well as what certain codes look like, such as the open tag and close tag symbols. After some of the videos, you're asked to complete a Code Challenge to test what you've learned so far. You earn points for each completed challenge.

The second lesson is the same across all courses and talks about the workspace, the development environment where you write code and build the project. I like that it's incorporated right into the Treehouse website. Other coding courses, such as Safari Books Online and Google for Education Developer Resources require you to download a third-party text editor to work on the exercises and don't offer an automated way to check if your answer is correct.

After you complete a code challenge, Treehouse checks your work and offers suggestions if you made a mistake. There are also longer quizzes throughout to test your knowledge, though you can skip them. I found the quizzes to be helpful—not too easy and not too difficult. You earn a badge for each quiz that you pass. After I earned my first badge, I received a congratulatory email from the instructor, which is a nice touch. You can unsubscribe from these emails if you wish.

You can participate in one track at a time, but you can switch back and forth and resume where you left off. I switched over to Python, a programming language I knew nothing about. In this track, you work on creating a simple number-guessing game. This differs from how Code Avengers introduces Python by teaching you basic concepts.

When you choose to take a one-off class from the Library, you can view a video trailer before you begin. Recommended prerequisites are also listed, if applicable. You can bring your classes on the go with an iPhone or Android app. While you have to be online to complete the exercises and challenges, you can still learn offline by downloading the videos from iTunes.

If you run into problems with any of the projects you're working on, you can visit the forums to ask questions and troubleshoot code with other students and instructors, a feature that many of its competitors, such as Safari Books Online and Code Avengers, don't have. Codecademy, our Editors' Choice for free code-teaching services, also offers student forums. You can also get extra help or report a bug by emailing Treehouse support.

A Fun Way to Learn Coding

The PCMag Editors' Choice award-winning Treehouse offers a variety of courses and is great for beginners. It makes coding fun, by making learning a bit of a game, awarding points to track your progress. Treehouse's interface is appealing, and I like that it not only offers a free trial, but also the ability to pause your subscription at any time. It also has what, I think, is key for coding classes: forums where students can get help with coding exercises from other students and teachers. There's nothing more frustrating than not being able to tell why your code isn't working, and it's also helpful to see that you're not the only one struggling. As such, Treehouse is the complete code-learning package.